AN EMPTY HAND

The firmware of our mind indulges us so subtly and regularly with it’s own impetus. The circuits ground into our brains through conditioning, prompt action. The need for perfectionism pushes us. The thoughts keep on coming and there is no space seen. It’s just thoughts racing through our life of not-so-quiet desperation. We are not questioning the patterns, even the ‘good’ ones.

When we fill and refuel ourselves with this drive, this anxiousness, with a general future constantly leaking in, we travel with a bloatedness of luggage. Additionally, our processor has not gotten any rest as it is over-clocking everything. Our mind cannot not ‘know’ and not let go of understanding the ‘why’ of where we are going. It must process because where would we be without it? We wouldn’t even know we got there or not. So the mind says. Do we believe the mind? Is that belief an impediment to really knowing? So many obstacles, so little time. But it is all Now. This is where it happens. And then, there is the backdrop, where we really Are.

Lugging all the above all the time, is that not what we do? Our hands are not nearly empty enough to grasp anything else. How can we receive the ‘fullness’ when we get all too involved in the irrelevant gathering of trinkets, ideas, and beliefs? Does nature have this problem?

Seeing when the conditioning comes in, when our regular visits of stimuli that prompts us to behave in very predictable ways, is essential. Seeing the prompts, like shame, clinging, and need for control or recognition, is seeing how we have come to commit ourselves to slavish responses.

One of the bigger, subtler uncatalogued movements we make with the out of control mindlessness of the mind, is the mind’s need to know. Is knowing how whatever (insert distraction) works, really necessary for Being (whatever that means -ha,ha)? The answer is no. But the reality is that ‘that’ is all we do, as we are doing it now, as we read.

This pathway of the mind, is like the Holy Grail of being the mind. But then it is the mind and this is to be expected. However, we are not expecting it so much as reacting to it, in using the mind to carve out things that the mind has no business in pursuing. It is so embedded that it may be the last domain of mind interference we itemize. Just hearing this blasphemy, gets our reactivity going big time. True? Are we watching? Nothing personal. It is just the tool we call the mind. It is not Us.

Because the needs and the chatter are not real, there is nothing to get rid of. Reality is not at the conceptual level. Real perception does not need nor can really be destroyed by ideas. It Is.

Ferguson, Missouri is a representative of us. The operationalization of distortions of conditioning and mindlessness is phenomenal. To see trust, that is core to having a working relationship between the police and the people, being senselessly being replaced by it’s antithesis, fear, is a lesson in self-delusion on an institutional scale.

When we see that we have lost our connection to ourselves (at a deeper level) and not see anything wrong with that, is individually and collectively troubling. Losing the connection is everything. When we lose the connection, we engage in separateness and ego aggrandizement.

The Justice Department had only 26 recommendations they are mandating for the Police Department! The DOJ had found a pattern of racial bias and profiling in the Police Department’s handling of interactions with people of color. There was a monetization of arresting and fining victims of color for minor transgressions. Inappropriate police competition to make petty arrests sickened the Department’s behavior. Racist emails were exchanged by city workers. And then the mayor of Ferguson makes a statement that makes it look like he just found out.

“Let me be clear, this kind of behavior will not be tolerated in the Ferguson Police Department or …in the city of Ferguson.” Mayor of Ferguson James Knowles III {At an evening news conference after DOJ findings were released.}

Residents appear to be living in a different world than their mayor. Approximately 66% of the residents of Ferguson are African-Americans. It will be interesting to see if future changes are substantive enough to engender enough change to regain the essential trust that has been lost for too long.

“They need to clean the whole department out and try to diversify. If the Police Chief and the department are not replaced, it’s not going to be enough for the neighborhood.”
Toriano Johnson, Barber on West Florissant Avenue where looting and protests occurred.

Trust is having an open hand with nothing in it except openness. We do this when we greet and connect with one another. An open hand is potential for anything to occur and manifest. It presupposes no hard agenda. It is the connection among us, affirming itself. This is the uncomplicated starting point of mutual possibility.

Fear is an open hand with the intent to harm and separate ourselves from Ourselves. It is connection lost in hate and violence. Fear distorts vision and the community of One.

The belief that we are separate is just an idea called a belief. Beliefs are not real but do affect our perception. What we believe, we will perceive. When we are fully connected to whom we really are, our beliefs mean nothing relative to Being. Beliefs become more significant when we believe they are real. The mind has ‘good’ beliefs and ‘bad’ beliefs. Each type of belief has it’s ramifications. The greater skill is not in choosing which beliefs, but seeing that there is an idea, a belief, that rules us. Unconscious beliefs are extremely dangerous because we delude ourselves into believing something that is not real. The first order of business is to see our behavior and the associated belief that drives it. Then there is the possibility to change the belief and/or reduce beliefs to the unreality that they are.

When we are so wedded to ‘believing’ our schtick, that we lose our connection to ourselves and humanity (one and the same), we are being driven by the fickleness of the mind. When we need to cognitively know so badly, that we indulge the mind to the degree we depend on it past our innate connection to whom we are, we at that moment, abandon “The Energy” of Us.

An empty hand trusts the freedom of the Moment. It ideally does not decidedly know, because ‘not knowing’ is a prelude to opening the full potential of “What Is”. Openness does not need believing ‘old’ data to properly perceive. Prejudicial conclusions unseen, coming through, compromise The Moment.

No one cannot achieve being here right now. This is the natural starting point, that is, right now. Emptying our hands, is losing the fear and separation. It allows the connection of all hands to come together.

This Iz Daddy’O